An example of how to analyze and discuss 'social illness'

What positive lessons can be learned about social illness prevention? What positive lessons and drawbacks can be learned about the development of health policy and individual lifestyle programs relating to personal choices? Justify your answers with appropriate research and reasoning

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In order to address this topic, I'm going to choose something that's is 'new' and may not technically be considered a social illness - compulsive hoarding, and hopefully this will give you an idea and / or framework to use when answering this question. I suspect you've already covered what social illness is in your class and course materials. One of the easiest ways to approach this is to use a three step method.

1. Discuss some of the positive lessons learned about social illness from your course and then apply these to your topic. For example, compulsive hoarding is considered to be a fairly 'new' illness in U.S. society and so people are drawn to stories of people who have this problem; this is seen with the popularity of tv shows doing interventions with people who are hoarders. This is where people cannot throw material items away and when it is in its most severe form, homes become dilapidated and sometimes condemned because the individual can not longer take care of him / herself or their surroundings. These shows often attempt to perform a successful intervention / solution to help physically clean up the mess and provide some counseling for individuals thus showing that if people received support and help when they began hoarding, that this situation could be ...

Solution Summary

This solution provides a basic structure of a paper discussing identifying and preventing social illness in the U.S.

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Attitudes toward Serious Mental Illness (SMI)

For this question you will need access to Irene Covarrubias and Meekyung Han's study entitled Mental Health Stigma about Serious Mental Illness among MSW Students: Social Contact and Attitude.

Describe the population of either people in which the study is interested. Briefly describe the characteristics of this sample, including (A) demographics, (B) inclusion criteria if any; (C) exclusion criteria if any. Describe how the authors selected the sample. Include the steps they took to recruit participants. Did they provide enough detail so that someone else would be able to follow the "recipe" to recreate their study? Did the authors provide a rationale for their sampling decisions?

What was the expected sample size needed? Did the authors provide citations (primary sources) to support the sample size decision, (e.g., a power analysis, articles indicating effect size of scales, or citations justifying their qualitative sample size). Did they get the sample they expected? Did they have to revise their sampling plans? Why? How?

Describe the site(s) or source from which the authors drew their sample.

Who did the authors have to get permission from to use their site or source? Does the site have a separate IRB? What did the authors do to obtain permission to access the population or data source?

How were the potential participants first contacted? Were participants contacted following the study?

Describe the exact procedure that was used to carry out the study. This is a step-by-step description of exactly how the research was conducted. Where, when, how, did they collect their data? This should read like a recipe for conducting the study. Did the authors include all the necessary details so that someone else would be able to follow the steps and be able to replicate the study? If not, what was missing?

Describe all methods and procedures for data analysis including: (a) types of data analyzed, (b) how the authors organized raw data, managed, and processed data, (c) how they prepared data for analysis, and (d) how they stored and protected their data. If they did not describe these things, what should be listed?

For each research question or sub-question, detail the actual data analyses that were conducted to answer each specific question or how the authors tested each hypothesis.

Describe any ethical considerations given the sample population and/or topic. Did the authors protect human participants while identifying the sample, while collecting the data, while analyzing the data, after data were collected, when they stored their data? If they did not describe these things, what should they have talked about in this section?

Is the study more than minimal risk? Does the study examine a vulnerable population? Can it be more than minimal risk if the population is not vulnerable? What special steps did the authors take to protect their participants? Refer to the Capella research website for more information about minimal risk and vulnerable populations. If these authors had to go through the Capella IRB, would this study be considered more than minimal risk or using a vulnerable population?